Just a heads up on today's episode we'll be discussing mental health and substance abuse if you or someone you know needs help

You can call the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988. Okay onto the show

I'm John one Hill. This is the weeds if it feels like things are hard and heavy and overall just

Really rough right now you aren't alone

We are seeing record high levels of

adults and children experiencing mental health distress

We see that through increased visits to psych emergency rooms. We're seeing increased rates of

death related to drug abuse and alcohol abuse and suicide in a lot of different populations

That's a list of cause love. She's an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and a clinical psychologist by training

But what I want to say is that we also

Probably were under reporting mental health distress for a long time especially in decades past

So I think what also is happening now is we're having kind of a renaissance in how people

Talk about mental health and mental health problems and that it's in the mainstream

It's okay to admit that you're having mental health struggles

It's okay to seek help and that just wasn't true for decades and decades

About one in four adults in the US are currently living with the mental illness and during the pandemic a lot of that was compounded

The pandemic in some ways

Really elevated the discussion of mental health in this country

Also because it was exacerbating a lot of different mental health difficulties. So we saw

Rates of alcoholism and deaths related to drug abuse skyrocket during the pandemic because

There were fewer resources available to people, you know when we shuttered the schools when we shuttered doctors offices

We also restricted people from having access to a lot of services

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